Featured Story
California High School Student Finds School Bathrooms are Polluted with Thirdhand Smoke Residue
Rosalia Park, a high school student from Los Angeles, California, recognized a problem with smoking and vaping in her school’s bathrooms. Working with the Thirdhand Smoke Resource Center, she designed an experiment to test her school bathrooms for thirdhand smoke residue. Upon completion of her experiment, she went on to win numerous accolades at regional, state,
Must Read Stories
Children’s Hands Can Tell us if They were Exposed to Thirdhand Smoke
A recent study from San Diego State University suggests that nicotine on the hands of children is one of the most effective ways to measure children’s thirdhand smoke exposure over time and in different environments. In collaboration with colleagues at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, the researchers
Carpets Retain a Stubborn Grip on Pollutants from Tobacco Smoke
A new study from thirdhand smoke researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory shows that thirdhand smoke chemicals that settle into surfaces do not stay there, but re-enter the air, sometimes transforming into new types of contaminants. In this study, the researchers evaluated the effects of ozonation, a common cleaning method, on smoke-exposed carpet.
Exposure to Second- and Thirdhand Smoke in Private Vehicles
This study assessed tobacco smoke chemicals in air and settled dust from private cars in Spain and the United Kingdom. Researchers examined cars from nonsmokers, smokers who do not smoke in their cars, and smokers who do smoke in their cars.
Does Thirdhand Smoke Make You Sick? The German Newspaper Die Zeit Investigates.
As Germany plans to ban smoking in cars with children or pregnant women, the German newspaper, Die Zeit, asked experts to weigh in on the forthcoming policy. The experts concluded that this policy does not go far enough and advised caution, especially for children, due to long-term risks posed by thirdhand smoke exposure (known as cold smoke exposure in Germany). Read the full story to answer the question, “Does Cold Smoke Make You Sick?”
Can you test for thirdhand smoke?
Tobacco smoke contains thousands of chemicals that break down and interact with the environment. Scientists have developed sensitive tests1 using those chemical markers that can detect thirdhand smoke chemicals in the air, in house dust, on surfaces of indoor environments, and on people. However, these tests are expensive to conduct and few are available outside of university laboratories available at this time.
What does it mean when we smell stale tobacco smoke?
Have you ever walked into a room and gotten a whiff of stale tobacco smoke? Or maybe smelled it as someone walked by? The smell of stale cigarette smoke–even when no one is smoking–is a sign of thirdhand smoke. As we breathe in, odor receptors in our noses recognize the chemicals in thirdhand smoke and trigger a signal in our brains that allows us to recognize stale tobacco smoke.
How Can We Test For Tobacco Exposure In Children’s Environments?
A recent study by Thirdhand Smoke Resource Center Consortium member Melinda Mahabee-Gittens and colleagues investigated if hand nicotine levels can be used as an indicator of second- and thirdhand smoke exposure in children’s environments.
